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The Early Word: Eve of the Speech

With President Obama‘s first crack at the State of the Union address scheduled for Wednesday, The Times’s Jackie Calmes has details on one of its major planks.

According to Ms. Calmes, Mr. Obama will call for a three-year spending freeze for many domestic initiatives, on programs ranging from air traffic control to national parks. The freeze, which the White House says will also be part of the new budget sent to Congress next week, would not cover, among other areas, spending on foreign aid or entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

Total estimated savings: somewhere around $250 billion, compared to around $9 trillion to $10 trillion in extra debt over the same time period.

This morning, the White House announced that it will sponsor a YouTube event, after the president’s address. Participants are asked to submit questions, vote on others and Mr. Obama will host an online event next week to answer them.

Health Care Roundup: With a week now gone since Senator-elect Scott P. Brown‘s win in Massachusetts, The Times’s David Herszenhorn and Robert Pear discuss the possibility that Democrats in Washington might rely on budget reconciliation — an at times controversial procedural maneuver that only requires a majority vote in the Senate — to pass health care legislation.

Reconciliation may be the Democrats’ best chance to pass a major overhaul of the health care system. But Mr. Herszenhorn and Mr. Pear also find that Democratic leaders are also facing the challenge of ensuring that rank-and-file members of their caucus remain “yes” votes in advance of this November’s elections.

For their part, Politico’s Chris Frates and Carrie Budoff Brown caution that top Democrats on Capitol Hill do not believe they will have decided how to proceed on health care by tomorrow’s address.

Emanuel Backlash: The Wall Street Journal’s Peter Wallsten reports that Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, is not so popular with the president’s liberal supporters these days.

Midterm Madness: It would have seemed an unlikely predicament a year ago, but it looks like Democrats will have to scratch and claw this year to hang on to the Senate seats held not too long ago by the president and vice president.

In Delaware, the decision by Beau Biden — the Delaware attorney general and eldest son of the vice president — to run for re-election instead of the Senate likely increases the odds that Representative Mike Castle, a popular moderate Republican and former governor, will capture the seat.

Over in Illinois, The Times’s Monica Davey finds the state’s Republican party, previously scraping along, is increasingly confident it can wrest away Mr. Obama’s old seat, especially after Mr. Brown’s victory last week. For their part, the state’s Democrats come up with a couple of reasons why Illinois is no Massachusetts — including the state’s loyalty to the president.

Speaking of Illinois, the state’s voters go to the polls in seven days to pick nominees for both Senate and governor, in the first major primary of the 2010 cycle. With the candidates sprinting toward the finish line, the state’s treasurer, Alexi Giannoulias, seems to be in the lead for the Democratic nomination for Senate, while Representative Mark Steven Kirk is the favorite to get the Republican nod.

And finally, The Wall Street Journal’s Kris Maher takes a look at one of the more colorful former members of Congress, Jim Traficant, as the Ohio Democrat considers taking another run at the House. (Mr. Traficant, who recently served seven years in prison, currently hosts a radio show.)

Tea Party Trouble: The Times’s Kate Zernike reports that the Tea Party convention scheduled for Nashville next month “is unraveling as sponsors and participants pull out to protest its expense and express concerns about ‘profiteering.'”

First Family Daybook: Mr. Obama does not have any public events on tap for Tuesday, but he does lunch with business leaders in the White House. In the afternoon, Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden are scheduled to meet with Robert M. Gates, the defense secretary.

Michelle Obama, meanwhile, heads to an officers’ wives’ luncheon at Washington’s Bolling Air Force Base to speak about the upcoming budget’s effect on military families.

(Moving over to the administration, Hillary Rodham Clinton will commemorate her first year at the State Department by holding a town hall meeting with staff members.)

Anti-Abortion Push: Coming back to the health care debate, the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group, is leading a road trip through the South this week, thanking lawmakers who voted for the so-called Stupak amendment and continuing to lobby over abortion provisions in the Congressional health care plans. (As you may remember, Democrats especially have found abortion to be a tricky issue during the health care debate.)

Rabbinical Plea: A group of rabbis bands together at the National Press Club on Tuesday to urge for the release of Sholom Rubashkin, the former higher-up at a kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa who has been convicted on 86 charges of financial fraud.

President Obama drew criticism on Thursday when he said, “we don’t have a strategy yet,” for military action against ISIS in Syria. Lawmakers will weigh in on Mr. Obama’s comments on the Sunday shows.Read more…